Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, 1962, Flamingo, ISBN 0-586-09157-2, could be described, in simplistic terms, as a pessimistic swan song. Certainly, it was one of the last novels Kerouac published and the last which took place in then present day America.
Additionally, much of the tone of Big Sur is overtly negative but, more interesting, perhaps, are the interludes of confident optimism dispensed after each deeply oppressive experience. The interplay between these opposing mindsets lend more clarity to the true complexity of the work and, indeed, to that of Kerouac’s character.
Path to Self-Destruction
Kerouac, or rather his alter-ego Jack Duluoz, admits himself early on in the novel that after experiencing the harassment brought on by ‘the publication of ‘[On the] Road’ the book that ‘made me famous’’ and ‘finally realizing I was surrounded and outnumbered and had to get away to solitude or die’, that his escape to the cabin at Big Sur, California, would not bring the relief he desired.
Despite the simplicity, the wholesomeness of nature, the absentminded, fulfilling occupations of wood-chopping and meditation, Duluoz ‘went crazy inside three weeks’, signaling towards certain events and realizations for confirmation of the inevitability of his experiences. The ‘signposts’ he catalogs indicate only in part the motivations for his self-destruction, more succinctly, however, they explain the disturbing and curiously contradictory world view which comes sidling along with it.
Contradictory Notions of Reality
Foremost among these is the ‘awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I’m just a sick clown and so is everybody else’.
This statement opposes the very root of Kerouac’s artistic convictions and appears to single-handedly destroy the central thesis to most of his preceding canon. It cannot, however, be taken at face value. The notion of “being fooled” into a certain attitude when the opposite outlook is the “truth” pervades the novel, operating both for the positive and the negative.
In one instance Duluoz exclaims the real “truth” to be a happy, sleepy smiling at the world because it’s all alright and could never be any other way – everything else is just taking ‘things too serious’. In the next however, he sees his sober conclusions as foolish, his happy assumptions become ‘dumb old thought[s]’, almost nonsensical.
It is clear that Duluoz’ visions of the world depend wholly on his present state of mind – that the truth, the glaring obvious truth, remains only so long as he can maintain the mindset that spawned it. Naturally, as Kerouac was well aware, this logic works just as successfully in reverse, as annotated in the final passages of the book directly after a particularly dark period:
‘Nothing ever happened – Not even this – St Carolyn by the Sea will go on being golden one way or another – The little boy will grow up and be a great man – There’ll be farewells and smiles…Something good will come out of all things yet – And it will be golden and eternal just like that’
By the repetition of the assured ‘will’ – a nod again to that sanguine aphorism “everything will be okay” – Duluoz works himself into a secure, willful positivism, almost bordering on naivety. He makes it quite clear that this is the state which he finds most preferable. Whatever your personal opinion, this is his and he will let it stand for all ‘golden eternity’ as the final conclusion to the novel’s multifarious experiences – ‘There is no need to say another word.’
Jack Kerouac is the author of a number of novels and a series of poetry anthologies. He is perhaps best known for his semi-autobiographical novel: On the Road.
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